Crowdsourcing Road Safety Campaign in Moscow

Crush the Speed

October 17, 2013

A driving safety campaign in Russia is getting people to slow down their driving by using the objects of horrific crashes: smashed up cars.

The latest crowdsourcing campaign designed to prevent future crashes is the brainchild of creative agency Hungry Boys, part of POSSIBLE, commissioned by insurance company Alfa Strakhovanie, and features a Crush The Speed site where the public can move around an embedded Google map of the city to pinpoint exactly where they think one of the smashed up vehicles should go. Options at the top of the page let users select the most popular spots, all spots or place a car, with options to use Facebook and Twitter to publicise their pin drop. Anyone who might have crashed their own vehicle is being encouraged to donate it to the project, rather than sell it for parts. They can do so by getting in touch on Facebook or Twitter.

For Vlad Sitnikov, creative director at Hungry Boys, the campaign is a shocking but absolutely necessary one. And he knows it will have an impact.

"I was in a hurry on the way to work one day when I noticed a car crash by the roadside," he tells Wired.co.uk. "Seeing the aftermath of this particularly nasty accident slowed me down. This is when the idea came to me to use post-crash cars as warning signs.

"It is distressing and very real. Some of these cars will have been involved in fatal road traffic accidents. It will make people think about their own lives and others and hopefully slow them down."